Bluegrass World Will Have Sounds To Suit Choosy Pickers

Jim Fee reached up to the Martin acoustic guitar hanging against the wood-paneled wall and ran his thumb across its strings.

A golden chord echoed through Bluegrass World's hall.

It was early on a Saturday evening, before opening time, and except for staff and members of the Big Timber Bluegrass Band, the club was empty.

Fee, band leader and club manager, predicts it won't be that way for long. Bluegrass World -- at 2500 Curry Ford Road, just east of Bumby Avenue -- will have its grand opening this week, from 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. With the Big Timber Music Shack adjoining the hall, Bluegrass World is Orlando's only combined club-music store serving devotees of this roots music. But is there enough of a bluegrass community in Central Florida to support the venture?

''Oh yeah,'' Fee said, ''once we get the word out.'' And Fee can prove his point by sending you to his parking lot on any Tuesday night.

For the past four years, first in the parking lot of the original Big Timber Music Shack on South Conway Road and now outside Bluegrass World, amateur bluegrass musicians have gathered by the dozens on Tuesday nights for informal fiddling and picking sessions.

''We've never stopped that,'' Fee said. ''That's open house for all the local pickers that want to come. We all just gather up and sit around and pick.''

As you probably guessed from the name, the club is also aimed at the tourist trade. Fee and the owners of the club, Glen and Donna Odom, want to give Central Florida's visitors yet another ''world'' to enjoy. ''There's a large number of people coming and going in this state that love bluegrass,'' Fee said.

Bluegrass World may draw other music fans as well. ''I find that most people who love rock are bluegrass fans, too,'' Fee said. ''I have no idea why, but rock is a little bit of a rebellious type of thing and bluegrass goes back to the roots of all that. And bluegrass is really the original country music.''

Whether for local or traveling fans, the building, staff and musicians at Bluegrass World are ready.

Beer, wine, soda, iced tea and lemonade will be served along with snacks ranging from popcorn to barbecued chicken. The acoustically sound club is located in a former Presbyterian church. The wood on the stage walls, the floor and the ceiling predated the club.

''Every bit of it,'' Fee said. ''It's basically just like it was.'' The club's owners added more wood paneling and murals on the walls, pine-barrel tables and overhead lights in wagon wheels. From the Music Shack's stock came the guitars, fiddles and dobros that hang on the rear stage wall.

''They're all for sale,'' said Fee, walking onto the stage. ''Here we have an Earl Scruggs, one of the models that Gibson came out with when they copied his 1935 banjo.''

It was another banjo picker, however, who inspired the creation of Bluegrass World. His name was Chubby Anthony, and he founded the Big Timber Bluegrass Band in the early 1970s. Glen Odom was his manager.

''Chubby was from Cherryville, North Carolina,'' Fee said. ''He died in February 1980. He had a lot of health problems. But he was a helluva picker. We were on the verge of something really big when Chubby died.''

Fee recalled that Odom said to him, ''I want you to keep the band and keep going with it.''

More than six years later, the pickers at Bluegrass World may be on the verge of something big again. Chubby Anthony would be proud.